You could quite easily price in vehicle externalities to registration costs.
Want to buy an SUV that rolls in a light breeze and minces pedestrians? That’ll be 3x the ACC costs please. Same goes for axle weight and emissions.
And it’s not even a bad idea to put all vehicles on a RUC system. Something like this has potentially been on the cards for decades.
The only problem is, because it’s this government, it’s not ‘let’s do this relatively sensible administration of our transport network.’ It’s ‘how do we make life harder for those lefty EV owners?’ And Simeon Brown is too much of a thick ideologue to really understand any more than that.
I don't think emissions should be involved, that should be on manufacturers to sort and as vehicles get upgraded emissions get reduced... also factoring that one of the largest rubbish dumps in the world is currently on fire.
Why, in the midst of an ongoing climate crisis, with the arctic and antarctic melting at record rates, with sea surface temperatures jetting rapidly off the charts, and in the wake of two massive climate related disasters in NZ in recent memory, do you think governments should not take emissions into consideration when making policy?
Furthermore because there is a problem where something is on fire that shouldn’t be and is increasing pollution at a large rate, how is this then a good idea for the rest of us to shrug and keep making *even more* pollution?
Is ignorance and illogic the gift from your gods?
This probably doesn't make reasonable sense if your objective is to portion cost based on impact of vehicle. The reason for this is that pretty much all damage on roads comes from trucks due to the fourth power law.
As an example the road stress ratio of a truck to a car is roughly 10,000 to 1.
You could of course use this to incentivize certain purchase types of economical cars for environmental reasons, just likely wouldn't be justifiable for larger cars to pay more in terms of raw impact on roads.
Truck usage should also be considered.
Log trucks fuck the road, foreign owned forest and straight to the port for export.
Fuck all gain for NZ and we pay for all the damage.
NZTA have stated (under the previous government) that vehicles under 6T do an insubstantial amount of damage to the road. I think there are lots of good reasons to charge larger vehicles more (as there are lots of other metrics on which they will have a negative impact compared to smaller vehicles), weight isn't an ideal one to target.
Now, making heavy vehicles pay more makes a lot of sense. Getting more freight shifted via rail, reducing pollution, lots of good reasons that heavy vehicles should pay their fair share.
Yes, but a 12 tonne truck does 150x the damage of a Raptor. I heard someone from NZTA say a while back that of the $76 light RUC rate, about $1 is related to the vehicle weight, and the other $75 is to reflect the non-weight related costs of the transport system (stuff like road signs, public transport, policing, non-weight based costs of building new roads etc)
Although this is true I still think they should increase it and increase repair speeds and maintaining road quality. The amount of unrepaired pot holes and such on the roads is quite annoying - so I think they're still not really paying for what they should be.
It's a great question, I also wonder how many leaks are actually due to stress forces out on the pipes due to trucks.
(I tried to look this up but couldn't figure out historic depth of pipes below roading in Wellington to understand impact)
Who are they? Waka Kotahi only manage the state highway network. The state of the state highway network has been in managed decline for about a decade from when they decided to fix the budget and subsume price rises through lowering maintenance standards. The costs for less potholes is actually really high.
The 'they' I was referring to would be trucks and heavy vehicles that cause the vast majority of road damage. RUCs are meant to account for the damage vehicles cause on roads but clearly that's not being taken into account properly.
Im not very clever in this department. What im hearing is we're cutting the fuel tax and swapping it with RUC, and we have to pay for extra bits and bobs on the way. It feels like the same thing with extra steps/fees?
They’ve already pushed the costs over to EVs though? Which sucks, to be clear, but at least this change puts all road users on the same scheme, which is probably better for all. But I haven’t looked at the details.
An EV pays $76 per 1000km RUC. If you calculate out the RUC on fuel right now, that's about the RUC you would pay if your car had the fuel consumption of a Ford Ranger, which clearly a Nissan Leaf is not the equivalent of - it's more like a Corolla I guess. I don't think the RUC is set correctly and this government of hot takes that takes advice from rural FB community pages has drank too much of the anti-EV kool aid.
They’re not pushing the costs though: they’re undermining government revenue by reduce the charges on the majority and increasing the charges on the minority
Not petrol though, how much those are paying is going to depend on fuel consumption.
Personally I think it's crazy to push RUCs on to all vehicles - leave them on diesel and electric but keep the per litre charge on petrol.
What should happen is an adjustment in rates to reflect the economy of vehicles in the fleet - basically the per litre cost on petrol needs to be increased to account for the much better efficiency of modern vehicles.
The environment is affected by petrol vehicle usage having petrol users pay more than EVs is sensible because road maintenance is not the only long term cost of car usage
That's a case for a carbon tax on the fuel which is entirely separate from RUCs which are about paying for the costs of maintaining the roading network
No
https://mta.org.nz/motorists/guide-to-fuel-prices#:~:text=Taxes,around%2018%20cents%20per%20litre.
All major fuel wholesalers participate in the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and pay ETS taxes based on the volumes of fuel they sell. The amount of tax is directly related to the price of carbon and with the price rising to nearly $76 per tonne, the ETS tax component is around 18 cents per litre. Other taxes applied to petrol include fuel excise duty which the revenue goes into the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) and is used to build and maintain road infrastructure Normally this tax is 70.024 cents per litre but the Government has temporarily reduced this by 25 cents per litre to provide relief to motorists due to high crude oil process globally.
Right, ok thats good to see but its small enough component to not put much if any pressure on the market if excise is replaced with RUC
Having a carbon tax that just covers their supposed cost in carbon really isn't enough to bring emissions down
Agree, I drive an EV and keep seeing emissions come up and just shake my head. It’s real simple, it’s in the name, they’re charges for using the road. Emissions are completely different thing, if we’re going to tax based on emissions that’s a separate conversation.
Thing is the current system does disincentive less fuel efficient petrol cars so universal RUCs will have the unintended consequence of making gas guzzlers more attractive to own.
This doesn't mean universal RUCs couldn't be implemented, but there would need to be some other lever applied - something like the scrapped clean car scheme perhaps.
Kinda - it goes from charging a fuel tax per litre to per km. Which is the same approach to RUC for EVs and diesel vehicles. The nice thing about this approach is that it means ALL vehicles regardless of energy source pay the same tax.
There are petrol Rangers that weigh more than my EV, and EVs that weigh more than hybrids Ultimately we all the roads regardless - so universal RUC makes sense.
This is probably the only NACT policy I agree with, but doubt they will implement in their 3 years. Until then, EVs and hybrids will pay effectively 60-100% **more** tax than equivalent petrol cars. A great look for decarbonisation!
Well they increased rego +$50 and already said they'd increase fuel taxes by 22c despite laughing at Labour for proposing gradual increases....
I'm wondering if they will replace with RUCs to 1/ Penalise EVs/hybrids and 2/ so they can keep increasing RUCs without being shown they are breaking promises.
Hybrid driver at 5L/100km, currently paying $14/100km. Along comes RUCs, now their fuel costs a bit over $10, but their RUCs is $7.60. They used to pay $3.80 in fuel excise tax, now they pay double the tax in RUCs.
The break-even for paying the same tax is 10L/100km. Anyone driving an SUV or Ute drinking more than 10L/100km will save money vs today.
Ask yourself who drives those vehicles, and who they vote for. QED.
If done well it could be a more equitable system. Currently people who can't afford newer, more efficient cars are carrying a greater share of the tax burden. A blanket RUC would be fairer in this regard.
Makes good sense. Dump the tax off the fuel, pay RUC instead. That way my fleet of Jags and Range Rovers will be way cheaper to run, and all those pathetic greenies with their Prius cars can suck it.
Love this government. As a rich pedophile landlord with private health insurance this year is the best one in a long time.
Here in Aus we don’t have road user charges. We just pay more at rego time depending on vehicle weight.
The only RUC we currently have is a surcharge on diesel to ensure heavy vehicles pay more.
They are planning to implement something for EVs in 2027 though. We’re gradually seeing the incentives dry up which is a massive environmental shame!
\*engine cylinder count
SA scrapped the proposed tax (yay)
[South Australian Government repeals electric vehicle tax plans (whichcar.com.au)](https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/south-australian-government-repeals-electric-vehicle-tax-plans)
Like, this would have doubled my 140km round trip to and from work cost.
I’m not 100% if it’s the right solution, but they definitely ought to make some changes… the RUC system that we’ve had for years is pretty dumb because it’s extremely inequitable to the point that it severely incentivises/disincentivises certain types of vehicles.
They’re proposing to make it more equitable by removing tax at the pump and making everyone pay an appropriate amount of RUC. That could work, but it’s a lot of burden to administrate an RUC system, and some people will inevitably attempt to cheat the system.
Most other countries have not bothered to try and collect tax per kilometre driven - for that very reason, it’s cumbersome to administer… and instead they just increase the tax per time-period to balance things out. So in NZ that could mean removing tax at the pump, but perhaps your annual vehicle rego cost increases by 2x to 4x to compensate. Sure it’s not technically fair. Especially not for those who only drive a few kilometres. But it is much, much easier for everyone to understand and also much easier (and therefore cost effective) to administer. Less bureaucrats at NZTA required.
I disagree about more to administer. Its probably about the same admin costs as petrol taxes, given they already have the system in place for all non petrol vehicles. They would just need to extend to all vehicles and increase the resources to handle them, the computer systems etc and administration costs would just scale up. It would just be a Waka Kotahi 6 month project, most likely. We already record KM traveled and all specific vehicle information every WOF.
If National were smart they would bring in increased RUCs for heavy/more polluting vehicles to encourage EV uptake again (dropped by 80% last month compared to the year before thanks to RUCs and loss of subsidies). But National are caught by special interest groups, so there's almost no hope of that. However when the pendulum swings again, the system could be easily extended.
Since the whole idea is a “user pays” roading, the more you use the roads, the more you have to pay to maintain those roads.
How does increasing the rego cost differentiate between a vehicle that travels 4,000 km per year and one that travels 40,000 km per year?
Or does the owner of the 4,000 km vehicle have to pay more to subsidy the owner of the 40,000 km vehicle by paying the same vehicle rego costs?
You’re completely right - that is the main drawback. The owner of the 4,000km vehicle pays more to subsidise the 40,000km vehicle.
But I’m actually OK with that for a couple of reasons:
- Administering a user-pays system per kilometre is seriously burdensome and it’s too easy to cheat the system if a dishonest person doesn’t wish to pay. There’s good reason hardly any countries have implemented this type of system.
- NZ has a very high rate of car ownership. I know so many people who own multiple cars. This will incentivise people to seriously consider if they really need that second car.
Having lived in Melbourne suburbs a while back I concur. We bought a small car because the public transport - great for going in and out of the cbd in daytime - was difficult any time you wanted to go even slightly sideways to a parallel suburb, or go to something slightly after hours.
We probably only used the car every second weekend, though. Sometimes to do things around town and sometimes to go for bigger trips around the state. The rego on the order of $1000/year meant we constantly and seriously considered *if* we wanted to own the car at all.
The flip side, though, was that there was still a hell of a lot of vehicle ownership and cars on the road. For many people I think the idea of a large annual flat fee told them that since they were paying it anyway, they should make the most of it by driving their car as much as possible over other options, with the relatively cheap variable petrol costs.
I don't have an issue with people having multiple cars, I have an issue with how much we use them. If they keep it on their property, have as many cars as you like! People using them causes congestion and emissions. So I'd rather a per km basis.
Dramatic Proposal guy beat me to it - Instead of repeating what they said I'll just upvote their comment
Also just add -simplicity and predictable income from the scheme
odds on they will double dip, require a remote unit in each car at the owners cost , and only have a limited number of companies that will be allowed to install them and run the system. of course they will be mates of the NACT govt and will charge like a herd of wounded buffalo..
I look forward to the regular budget evening ddos on the rug website when they take the opportunity to increase RUCs by a little every single year and we all have to pay them.
il call out this is mass surveillance by stealth, to add to the tracker we call a smart phone. every car truck being tracked to charge you but no privacy anymore
Should add more weight classes so bigger cars pay more
You could quite easily price in vehicle externalities to registration costs. Want to buy an SUV that rolls in a light breeze and minces pedestrians? That’ll be 3x the ACC costs please. Same goes for axle weight and emissions. And it’s not even a bad idea to put all vehicles on a RUC system. Something like this has potentially been on the cards for decades. The only problem is, because it’s this government, it’s not ‘let’s do this relatively sensible administration of our transport network.’ It’s ‘how do we make life harder for those lefty EV owners?’ And Simeon Brown is too much of a thick ideologue to really understand any more than that.
I don't think emissions should be involved, that should be on manufacturers to sort and as vehicles get upgraded emissions get reduced... also factoring that one of the largest rubbish dumps in the world is currently on fire.
Why, in the midst of an ongoing climate crisis, with the arctic and antarctic melting at record rates, with sea surface temperatures jetting rapidly off the charts, and in the wake of two massive climate related disasters in NZ in recent memory, do you think governments should not take emissions into consideration when making policy? Furthermore because there is a problem where something is on fire that shouldn’t be and is increasing pollution at a large rate, how is this then a good idea for the rest of us to shrug and keep making *even more* pollution? Is ignorance and illogic the gift from your gods?
Depends what type of emissions you’re talking about. CO2 is one obviously, but diesel particulates cause massive health issues too.
This probably doesn't make reasonable sense if your objective is to portion cost based on impact of vehicle. The reason for this is that pretty much all damage on roads comes from trucks due to the fourth power law. As an example the road stress ratio of a truck to a car is roughly 10,000 to 1. You could of course use this to incentivize certain purchase types of economical cars for environmental reasons, just likely wouldn't be justifiable for larger cars to pay more in terms of raw impact on roads.
Truck usage should also be considered. Log trucks fuck the road, foreign owned forest and straight to the port for export. Fuck all gain for NZ and we pay for all the damage.
So what you're saying is a Raptor does 8.6x the damage of a Corolla hatch to our roads?
NZTA have stated (under the previous government) that vehicles under 6T do an insubstantial amount of damage to the road. I think there are lots of good reasons to charge larger vehicles more (as there are lots of other metrics on which they will have a negative impact compared to smaller vehicles), weight isn't an ideal one to target. Now, making heavy vehicles pay more makes a lot of sense. Getting more freight shifted via rail, reducing pollution, lots of good reasons that heavy vehicles should pay their fair share.
Yes, but a 12 tonne truck does 150x the damage of a Raptor. I heard someone from NZTA say a while back that of the $76 light RUC rate, about $1 is related to the vehicle weight, and the other $75 is to reflect the non-weight related costs of the transport system (stuff like road signs, public transport, policing, non-weight based costs of building new roads etc)
Although this is true I still think they should increase it and increase repair speeds and maintaining road quality. The amount of unrepaired pot holes and such on the roads is quite annoying - so I think they're still not really paying for what they should be.
I imagine a true 'user pays' cost recovery system would result in the precious trucking lobby throwing their toys
How many of those unrepaired pot holes are actually due to water leaks below the roads though?
It's a great question, I also wonder how many leaks are actually due to stress forces out on the pipes due to trucks. (I tried to look this up but couldn't figure out historic depth of pipes below roading in Wellington to understand impact)
Who are they? Waka Kotahi only manage the state highway network. The state of the state highway network has been in managed decline for about a decade from when they decided to fix the budget and subsume price rises through lowering maintenance standards. The costs for less potholes is actually really high.
The 'they' I was referring to would be trucks and heavy vehicles that cause the vast majority of road damage. RUCs are meant to account for the damage vehicles cause on roads but clearly that's not being taken into account properly.
There are other externalities though, just pure size they take up on the road, impact damage, environmental damage etc.
That's foolish as road damage is not based on a linear weight per axel calculation. Unless you mean cars and heavy vehicles like trucks?
Yo' mama would pay more.
She big
[удалено]
This fictional clown car still weighs less than a Ranger buddy
Im not very clever in this department. What im hearing is we're cutting the fuel tax and swapping it with RUC, and we have to pay for extra bits and bobs on the way. It feels like the same thing with extra steps/fees?
Its just about pushing the costs over to EVs, more "fair" from a road maintenance cost perspective but disregarding environmental costs entirely
They’ve already pushed the costs over to EVs though? Which sucks, to be clear, but at least this change puts all road users on the same scheme, which is probably better for all. But I haven’t looked at the details.
An EV pays $76 per 1000km RUC. If you calculate out the RUC on fuel right now, that's about the RUC you would pay if your car had the fuel consumption of a Ford Ranger, which clearly a Nissan Leaf is not the equivalent of - it's more like a Corolla I guess. I don't think the RUC is set correctly and this government of hot takes that takes advice from rural FB community pages has drank too much of the anti-EV kool aid.
They’re not pushing the costs though: they’re undermining government revenue by reduce the charges on the majority and increasing the charges on the minority
It's more. Cars good for the environment need to pay "more"
Wow really? Is it because they generally weigh a lot more?
Nah, every car under 3.5 tonnes pays the same whether it's diesel or electric.
Not petrol though, how much those are paying is going to depend on fuel consumption. Personally I think it's crazy to push RUCs on to all vehicles - leave them on diesel and electric but keep the per litre charge on petrol. What should happen is an adjustment in rates to reflect the economy of vehicles in the fleet - basically the per litre cost on petrol needs to be increased to account for the much better efficiency of modern vehicles.
From what I've read the RUCs for EVs are the same as diesel cars. They want to penalise them.
They are the same, that is correct
Of course, in reality they don’t even actually weigh more than a diesel ute.
The roads don’t care how environmentally friendly your car is and neither should RUCs.
The environment is affected by petrol vehicle usage having petrol users pay more than EVs is sensible because road maintenance is not the only long term cost of car usage
That's a case for a carbon tax on the fuel which is entirely separate from RUCs which are about paying for the costs of maintaining the roading network
There IS a carbon tax in place for the fuel.
You mean the fuel excise tax which they might be scrapping in favour of RUCs?
No https://mta.org.nz/motorists/guide-to-fuel-prices#:~:text=Taxes,around%2018%20cents%20per%20litre. All major fuel wholesalers participate in the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and pay ETS taxes based on the volumes of fuel they sell. The amount of tax is directly related to the price of carbon and with the price rising to nearly $76 per tonne, the ETS tax component is around 18 cents per litre. Other taxes applied to petrol include fuel excise duty which the revenue goes into the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) and is used to build and maintain road infrastructure Normally this tax is 70.024 cents per litre but the Government has temporarily reduced this by 25 cents per litre to provide relief to motorists due to high crude oil process globally.
Right, ok thats good to see but its small enough component to not put much if any pressure on the market if excise is replaced with RUC Having a carbon tax that just covers their supposed cost in carbon really isn't enough to bring emissions down
On that we agree. Carbon price needs to increase to influence behaviour.
They do pay more because they buy fuel. But RUC is for road maintenance only so it should be equal.
Agree, I drive an EV and keep seeing emissions come up and just shake my head. It’s real simple, it’s in the name, they’re charges for using the road. Emissions are completely different thing, if we’re going to tax based on emissions that’s a separate conversation.
I own an EV too. There’s already an ETS component to petrol yet I see no one arguing those should be increased
Thing is the current system does disincentive less fuel efficient petrol cars so universal RUCs will have the unintended consequence of making gas guzzlers more attractive to own. This doesn't mean universal RUCs couldn't be implemented, but there would need to be some other lever applied - something like the scrapped clean car scheme perhaps.
Labour only likes the environment when it doesn't cost them tax dollars I've learnt. 😮💨 Total bastards, just like National.
I'm sorry... do you think we have a Labour government??
Kinda - it goes from charging a fuel tax per litre to per km. Which is the same approach to RUC for EVs and diesel vehicles. The nice thing about this approach is that it means ALL vehicles regardless of energy source pay the same tax. There are petrol Rangers that weigh more than my EV, and EVs that weigh more than hybrids Ultimately we all the roads regardless - so universal RUC makes sense. This is probably the only NACT policy I agree with, but doubt they will implement in their 3 years. Until then, EVs and hybrids will pay effectively 60-100% **more** tax than equivalent petrol cars. A great look for decarbonisation!
I dont truely care as long as they don't double dip. Tax the fuel AND charge RUC.
Well they increased rego +$50 and already said they'd increase fuel taxes by 22c despite laughing at Labour for proposing gradual increases.... I'm wondering if they will replace with RUCs to 1/ Penalise EVs/hybrids and 2/ so they can keep increasing RUCs without being shown they are breaking promises.
Hybrid driver at 5L/100km, currently paying $14/100km. Along comes RUCs, now their fuel costs a bit over $10, but their RUCs is $7.60. They used to pay $3.80 in fuel excise tax, now they pay double the tax in RUCs. The break-even for paying the same tax is 10L/100km. Anyone driving an SUV or Ute drinking more than 10L/100km will save money vs today. Ask yourself who drives those vehicles, and who they vote for. QED.
Looked at that fast track bill recently? Yeah it's obvious, and it sucks
How are the poor landlords supposed to survive if they don’t double dip?
If done well it could be a more equitable system. Currently people who can't afford newer, more efficient cars are carrying a greater share of the tax burden. A blanket RUC would be fairer in this regard.
Winding back odometers will become rife.
Nah thats an absolutely insane hassle, dash removal is a bitch and a half, just use a hidden switch to disable the odo.
Growing up rurally I feel like every other vehicle had this switch.
It's a PITA dash removal every time for newer cars.
Our main family car does > 40k in a year. PITA < RUC on 40k
Makes good sense. Dump the tax off the fuel, pay RUC instead. That way my fleet of Jags and Range Rovers will be way cheaper to run, and all those pathetic greenies with their Prius cars can suck it. Love this government. As a rich pedophile landlord with private health insurance this year is the best one in a long time.
RUCs fair enough, the possible requirement of an eroad is dumb.
Here in Aus we don’t have road user charges. We just pay more at rego time depending on vehicle weight. The only RUC we currently have is a surcharge on diesel to ensure heavy vehicles pay more. They are planning to implement something for EVs in 2027 though. We’re gradually seeing the incentives dry up which is a massive environmental shame!
\*engine cylinder count SA scrapped the proposed tax (yay) [South Australian Government repeals electric vehicle tax plans (whichcar.com.au)](https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/south-australian-government-repeals-electric-vehicle-tax-plans) Like, this would have doubled my 140km round trip to and from work cost.
Yes, this has been talked about for years
Oh look another new tax
It's actually one less tax. Removing petrol duty, and extending the already existing RUC.
Isn’t RUC built into the per litre price of petrol? If so would that be coming out or are they gonna double-dip tax petrol users?
It’s instead of taxing at the pump.
Thats when we shal also leave this country.
If it is offset by removing fuel taxes, then sure!
I’m not 100% if it’s the right solution, but they definitely ought to make some changes… the RUC system that we’ve had for years is pretty dumb because it’s extremely inequitable to the point that it severely incentivises/disincentivises certain types of vehicles. They’re proposing to make it more equitable by removing tax at the pump and making everyone pay an appropriate amount of RUC. That could work, but it’s a lot of burden to administrate an RUC system, and some people will inevitably attempt to cheat the system. Most other countries have not bothered to try and collect tax per kilometre driven - for that very reason, it’s cumbersome to administer… and instead they just increase the tax per time-period to balance things out. So in NZ that could mean removing tax at the pump, but perhaps your annual vehicle rego cost increases by 2x to 4x to compensate. Sure it’s not technically fair. Especially not for those who only drive a few kilometres. But it is much, much easier for everyone to understand and also much easier (and therefore cost effective) to administer. Less bureaucrats at NZTA required.
Rego would have to go up by more than 2-4x to make up the revenue though.
I disagree about more to administer. Its probably about the same admin costs as petrol taxes, given they already have the system in place for all non petrol vehicles. They would just need to extend to all vehicles and increase the resources to handle them, the computer systems etc and administration costs would just scale up. It would just be a Waka Kotahi 6 month project, most likely. We already record KM traveled and all specific vehicle information every WOF. If National were smart they would bring in increased RUCs for heavy/more polluting vehicles to encourage EV uptake again (dropped by 80% last month compared to the year before thanks to RUCs and loss of subsidies). But National are caught by special interest groups, so there's almost no hope of that. However when the pendulum swings again, the system could be easily extended.
It’ll keep NZpost and NZTA ultra busy, printing and sending labels!! I wonder if they’ll get more staff?!!!
No more road tax on my petrol outboard?
It’s part of the coalition agreement with ACT.
And how will it work for things like mopeds? How much up front? It only costs me $10 to fill it.
It’s only petrol vehicles which don’t have them. Maybe double for Ford Rangers.
The most important question is if they make every vehicle have rucs will the take all fuel tax’s away I doubt it
I just think they should increase rego cost, if they want to do that I thought the same thing when they added them to EVs
Since the whole idea is a “user pays” roading, the more you use the roads, the more you have to pay to maintain those roads. How does increasing the rego cost differentiate between a vehicle that travels 4,000 km per year and one that travels 40,000 km per year? Or does the owner of the 4,000 km vehicle have to pay more to subsidy the owner of the 40,000 km vehicle by paying the same vehicle rego costs?
You’re completely right - that is the main drawback. The owner of the 4,000km vehicle pays more to subsidise the 40,000km vehicle. But I’m actually OK with that for a couple of reasons: - Administering a user-pays system per kilometre is seriously burdensome and it’s too easy to cheat the system if a dishonest person doesn’t wish to pay. There’s good reason hardly any countries have implemented this type of system. - NZ has a very high rate of car ownership. I know so many people who own multiple cars. This will incentivise people to seriously consider if they really need that second car.
Having lived in Melbourne suburbs a while back I concur. We bought a small car because the public transport - great for going in and out of the cbd in daytime - was difficult any time you wanted to go even slightly sideways to a parallel suburb, or go to something slightly after hours. We probably only used the car every second weekend, though. Sometimes to do things around town and sometimes to go for bigger trips around the state. The rego on the order of $1000/year meant we constantly and seriously considered *if* we wanted to own the car at all. The flip side, though, was that there was still a hell of a lot of vehicle ownership and cars on the road. For many people I think the idea of a large annual flat fee told them that since they were paying it anyway, they should make the most of it by driving their car as much as possible over other options, with the relatively cheap variable petrol costs.
I don't have an issue with people having multiple cars, I have an issue with how much we use them. If they keep it on their property, have as many cars as you like! People using them causes congestion and emissions. So I'd rather a per km basis.
Dramatic Proposal guy beat me to it - Instead of repeating what they said I'll just upvote their comment Also just add -simplicity and predictable income from the scheme
odds on they will double dip, require a remote unit in each car at the owners cost , and only have a limited number of companies that will be allowed to install them and run the system. of course they will be mates of the NACT govt and will charge like a herd of wounded buffalo..
And track, store, supply for subpoena, and sell the supposedly-aggregated GPS data, of course.
The hits just keep coming
This will make boating cheaper, so I'm happy.
I look forward to the regular budget evening ddos on the rug website when they take the opportunity to increase RUCs by a little every single year and we all have to pay them.
I've got a digital odometer, I wonder how easy it would be roll it back 10k each year. I feel a new money making venture coming my way.
unplug the sensor and ignore the check engine light
judging how much they fucked up implementation for EV's, dont hope for much!
Waaaay to admin heavy. But whatever. govt sucks
Electric cars weigh a lot more than an average car and so are doing more damage to the road itself than the average car.
Would be awesome for boaties if they take the fuel tax away. Until we have to pay an environmental surcharge on boat ownership.
I use my lawn mower on the road all the time
when will drivers be able to live in dignity again
How unexpected. They won't say it's a new tax; just extending the current scheme to all road users.
Honestly everyone who uses the road needs to pay. That includes cyclists!!
Sure, cyclists RUC charge based on weight = 50c a year, admin costs on that? And then what? Charge pedestrians for walking?
So e-bikes when? And while you're starting to fume over that. Let's register them too.
il call out this is mass surveillance by stealth, to add to the tracker we call a smart phone. every car truck being tracked to charge you but no privacy anymore